 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. Americans have been industriously proving him wrong before and since, and there is no example more soulful than Jeff Bridges as world-weary country singer Bad Blake in "Crazy Heart."
Directed by Scott Cooper, Crazy Heart is a low-budget film—no CGI, household names or six-foot blue people here, only heart, soul, and a terrific score produced by veteran recording artist and producer T Bone Burnett. Here, there are second acts, not to mention third and fourths—but no fairy tales.
In a role now nominated for an Oscar, Bridges gives a performance that is deeply sympathetic, but while he brings pathos to the role he never slips into the truly pathetic. Even when we see him vomiting behind a building in the middle of a show, he cleans himself off and gets back on stage to finish the set. He's a badass, no doubt about it—but it's catching up with him.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is Jean, a reporter who sets out to interview Blake and winds up more entangled in the life of the washed up singer than she meant to be. Gyllenhaal is good but not great in the role; but the internal struggle between her better judgment and her undeniable attraction to Blake is powerful and beautifully acted. Jean has far too much experience with men like Blake. She is a woman who knows exactly what she's getting into, but she can't fight it.
Jean, and her four-year-old son Buddy give Blake the push he needs towards reawakening. As Bridges travels through one achingly lovely Southwestern landscape after another, from bowling alleys to bars to his home in Houston, we go along for the ride as Blake starts to realize that something has to change. Blake's search for redemption is sometimes successful, sometimes a heartbreaking failure. One of the movie's greatest strengths is that it never settles for an easy fix to Blake's troubles. Make no mistake, alcohol has destroyed this man's life, and there are some things he won't be able to apologize for.
Movie alcoholics are a tricky breed. Too often they are either played for laughs—what romantic comedy doesn't have a boozy grandma?—or portrayed as selfish monsters. Blake, though, is something else entirely. Bridges makes us hate the disease without hating Blake, and yet doesn't forgive Blake for his alcoholism. He's not a stereotype; he's simply a weak man who needs to find the strength to start doing right by the people in his life. If the movie has a flaw it is that we've seen this story before, most recently in "The Wrestler"—but Bridges creates a character who is nonetheless fresh, charming and heartbreakingly human.
After Bridges and Gyllenhaal, the star of "Crazy Heart" is the music. T Bone Burnett, who worked on "The Big Lebowski," "O Brother, Where Art Thou "and" Walk the Line, produced the score and it features music from Waylon Jennings, Lucinda Williams and Ryan Bingham, among others. This is what Jean calls "real country"—not about tractors or pickup trucks or fried chicken, but about being heartbroken and drunk and alone (Think Johnny Cash, not Kenny Chesney). Non-country fans might not rush out and buy the sound track, but Crazy Heart would not be half the film it is without its gritty, lyrical sound track.
"Crazy Heart" is a beautiful reminder of what American movies can be. Without giving away the plot of the movie, I'll say that Blake finds redemption and some measure of peace, but also that the movie resists both the trite Hollywood ending and the bleak post-modern ending it might have had, and settles instead on one that feels both true and satisfying. In "Crazy Heart," as in life, there are things that get broken and can't be fixed. But "Crazy Heart" also has real faith in the resilience of the human spirit, and assures us that there's always time for a second act.
Crazy Heart is now playing at Regal Cinemas in Newington and at Cinemagic in Salisbury Mass., and it will be playing at the MUB from April 1 to April 4.
Follow Ellen Stuart on Twitter.com/ellastu90.
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